1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a method and apparatus for maintaining plant operation procedures and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus which simplifies the maintenance of procedures containing internal references to other steps, external references to equipment and setpoints and cautions and notes intermingled with the procedure steps.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many types of plants and complex equipment, such as nuclear reactors, chemical processing plants, etc., have extensive detailed procedures for their operation. In the case of nuclear reactors, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires the use of written emergency operating procedures (EOPs) which define step-by-step responses to specific conditions as indicated by instrumentation of the reactor and its support systems. From time to time, these procedures require modification as, e.g., instrumentation is added, additional conditions of concern are recognized, previously prepared procedures are found to be inadequate, etc. In addition, when a new plant or reactor is constructed, many of the procedures created for an existing plant or reactor can be used at the new location, but some modifications may be necessary. A similar situation exists when procedures developed at one plant are applied to an existing plant that is similar, but not identical.
At the present time, such procedures can be maintained on a word processor, an outlining program or a similar software product. However, none of these software products are specifically directed to the situation involved in maintaining plant operation procedures. Most of these types of software products typically are able to view the procedure in only one way, i.e., as a document. Supporting documents, such as cross-references to instrumentation, equipment and setpoints used in the procedures can be difficult or impossible to generate automatically. In addition, internal references to one step in another step are typically not automatically identified and corrected when the step sequence changes. Also, integration of graphical representations which are common in such procedures typically require manual operations.